The Right Thing

I heard a story on the radio today told by a handicapped man, not totally paralyzed but bound to a wheelchair. He met a woman who saw through his disability and married him, because just like a woman, she fell in love with the intangible. He explained about the prejudice he has to endure; people are always assuming they are brother and sister; that she is his nurse, etc.

At a small Irish pub on Geary Street in San Francisco, in the twilight of my single years, I met an amazingly beautiful woman who was escorting a diminutive, legless man in a wheel chair. I had all the same thoughts the man on the radio described, but my internal censor stopped me short of asking the question; and as a result, I left without even attempting to get her number. I felt a strong connection, and yet I was trapped. Even if the two weren’t a pair, which I highly doubted, I could have turned out to be an insensitive prick for assuming it. The man was in a wheelchair, and undoubtedly, at least in my mind, he must have looked at people like me at the time--strong, healthy, and impossibly handsome (cough)—and wished to trade places, even for a day. Hey, there could be a story in that…

So out of respect I walked away. But the way she looked at me that night--you know the look guys. Normally we're like salmon swimming upstream, crashing into the rocks; she politely laughs while scanning the room. Not always though. Sometimes she really finds you interesting and often funny, which inspires the inner comedian. Maybe you get the slight touch on the arm that you pretend not to notice. She was all those things. And while I enjoyed it immensely, I was ever conscious of him, and I felt his helplessness and pain.

I used to think of that night a lot, but since I met my wife those coulda-beens don’t haunt me any more. The story on the radio however made me feel somewhat vindicated. I may have done the right thing after all.